Based on observations through early December, the average global temperature should be close to 57.74 degrees Fahrenheit.
That would make 2008 the coolest year since 1994, but a far warmer year than those prior to the industrial revolution.
The hottest year on record was 1998, which included a very strong El Niño ocean warming in the Pacific, followed by 2005, 2003 and 2002.
Britain’s Met Office predicted at the beginning of the year that 2008 would be cooler than recent years due to the La Niña ocean cooling that prevailed as the year began.
But Peter Stott of the agency’s Hadley Center cautioned that a cooler year in no way means that global warming is slowing.
“If we are going to understand climate change we need to look at long-term trends,” Stott said.
In March, climatologists from Germany’s University of Kiel predicted that a natural variation will offset the 0.55 degrees Fahrenheit (0.32 degrees Celsius) of warming predicted for the next decade by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The team projected that global temperatures will remain virtually constant until 2015, then begin to climb at an increasing rate.